NOTES | Intelligence vs Intellect

Buddha is very much in favor of intelligence, but remember that he does not mean intellect by it. Intellect is a heavy thing, intelligence is more total. Intellect is borrowed, intelligence is your own. Intellect is logical, rational; intelligence is more than logical. It is super-logical, it is intuitive. The intellectual person lives only through argument. Certainly, arguments can lead you up to a certain point, but beyond that, hunches are needed.

Even great scientists who work through reason come to a point where reason does not work, where they wait for a hunch, for some intuitive flash, for some light from the unknown. And it always happens: if you have worked hard with the intellect, and you don’t think that intellect is all, and you are available to the beyond, someday a ray penetrates you. It is not yours; and yet it is yours because it is nobody else’s. It comes from your innermost center. It looks as if it is coming from the beyond because you don’t know where your center is to be intuitive.

Buddha uses intelligence in the sense of awareness, in the sense of mindfulness. The Sanskrit word, sadhumati, is very beautiful. Mati means intelligence, and sadhu means sage: sagely intelligence; not only intelligence, but sagely intelligence. There are people who may be rational but are not reasonable. To be reasonable is more than to be rational. Sometimes the reasonable person will be ready to accept the irrational too… because he is reasonable. He can understand that the irrational also exists. The rational person can never understand that the irrational also exists. He can only believe in the limited logical syllogism.

But there are things which cannot be proved logically, and yet they are. Everybody knows they are, and nobody has ever been able to prove them. Love is; nobody has ever been able to prove what it is, or whether it is or not. But everybody knows… love is. Even people who deny — they are not ready to accept anything beyond logic… even they fall in love. When they fall in love then they are in a difficulty, they feel guilty. But love is.

And nobody is ever satisfied by intellect alone unless the heart also is fulfilled. These are the two polarities inside you: the head and the heart. Sadhumati means: a great synthesis of both, head and heart. Sadhu means the heart, and mati means the head.

When the sagely heart is joined together with a sharp intelligence, then there is a great change, a transformation. That’s what awareness is all about. ~ OSHO